


and then the bears came

by oh_no_oh_dear



Series: tungle dot hell [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Camping, Established Relationship, M/M, frickin BEARS man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 18:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10471533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_no_oh_dear/pseuds/oh_no_oh_dear
Summary: Combined prompts again! Sam + cooking and Sam/Steve + vodka





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is how camping usually goes, right?

    “It’ll be good for our spirits,” Steve had said.   
  
    “I read that it’s good for forming closer bonds,” Steve had mentioned not-at-all-casually over breakfast.  
  
    “Don’t you want some fresh air?” Steve had called loudly on one of their runs, as he lapped Sam.   
  
    “We both have some time off coming up, don’t we?” Steve mused as he did chin-ups, barely sweating. Sam, breathing hard through his 64th pushup, finally snapped.   
  
    “I’m not going camping, Steve. Shut. Up. About it.”  
  
Steve just grinned sheepishly. Sam groaned, because he knew a ‘I’ll drop it... for about 2 days’ look when he saw it.   
  


* * *

  
    “The mountains must be beautiful this time of year,” Steve had murmured against Sam’s neck late at night, his arm pulling the other man close to his chest.   
  
    “This again,” Sam muttered sleepily. “Steve, why are you so obsessed with this?”  
  
    “I never went as a kid,” Steve said mournfully. Sam made an unimpressed snort.   
  
    “Me neither. Try again.”  
  
    “It ...looks like fun?”  
  
    “Paying good money to buy a tent and camping supplies, leaving my warm apartment-- which already HAS sleeping and cooking _and showering_  amenities, might I add-- to get my ass bitten by mosquitoes and bears?”  
  
When Steve spoke, his voice shook a little from repressed mirth. “Are the bears and mosquitoes in cahoots, or--”  
  
    “I’m leaving you.”  
  
    “C’mon, Sam,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to his lover’s skin. “Please. I promise it’ll be fun.”  
  
    “... don’t make me regret this, Rogers.”  
  


* * *

  
Sam sincerely regretted meeting Steve Rogers sometimes. The object of his annoyance was currently trying without success to tie a tarp over their tent. Because it was raining (of course.) And their tent was leaking (fantastic.) And it was leaking because Steve Rogers was still a cheapass despite having a pretty sizable bank account (Sam understood why, but shut up.)  
  
    “Okay, I think I got it!” Steve called, sticking his head into the tent and positively beaming. Nothing -- not the bad weather, not the shitty tent, not even the absolute swarm of mosquitoes that adored him-- nothing was dampening his spirits. He clambered ungracefully into the tent, dripping water, and then shook his head to get the water out, spattering cold drops of rain all over Sam and his sleeping bag. Sam shot him a poisonous glare that Steve totally missed. And what was the point of glaring at someone if they didn’t notice, really?   
  
    “How you holding up, Sammy?”  
  
    “Don’t call me ‘Sammy,’ Rogers.”  
  
    “Aw, geeze. You’re grumpy, huh?”  
  
    “Die.”  
  
    “Great! Okay, let’s get some dinner going...”  
  
Sam tried to hold on to his bad mood, he really did. He was damp, he was cold, and he could only think that right at that moment, he _could_  be home with ESPN and some good whiskey, but _noooo_. But Steve was... he was so damn happy to be out here with Sam, fussing over him and setting up their little heat stove, rubbing his arms to warm him up, making him hot cocoa... Sam softened a little.   
  
(Steve’s wet t-shirt being plastered to his ridiculous torso helped to cheer him up, too.)  
  
    “What’ve we got to eat?” Sam asked, his voice slightly muffled from the sleeping bag being pulled up near his mouth. Steve rifled through their supply pack, pulling out a somewhat baffling assortment of food.   
“We’ve got... Spam, beef jerky, raisins, I think this is a potato, and... Skittles? You like Skittles, right? Oh hey-- a carrot!”  
  
    “Rogers, did you just close your eyes and grab random shit off the shelves at the supermarket?”  
  
    “Uh...”  
  
    “Rogers, _did you not go to the supermarket?”_  
  
    “I spent a lot of time looking for a reasonably-priced tent! I ran out of time!”  
  
    “Oh my god, you just took whatever was left in our pantry.”  
  
    “I was ... being resourceful?”  
  
    “You were in the war, man, how do you not know how to pack supplies?!”  
  
    “I wasn’t in charge of the supplies, I was in charge of punching holes in Nazi tanks!”  
  
    “Ohhh. My god.” Sam shuffled out of his sleeping bag and made his way over to Steve, who was looking decidedly sulky (but only because he really had fucked up on the food.) Sam sat on his haunches near him and placed his hands on either side of Steve’s face.   
“I love you, but you’re an idiot.”  
  
    “....you love me?”   
  
Sam blinked. He hadn’t meant to...   
“Well, yeah. Guess so.”   
  
Steve positively glowed, leaning forward to kiss Sam soundly on the lips. “Me too. The love thing, I mean. But about you.”  
  
    “You’re a disaster,” Sam muttered, unable to keep the fondness out of his voice. Steve shrugged, still smiling like a dope as he watched Sam unzip a small section of their pack.   
“Lucky for you, _some_ of us thought to go to the corner store yesterday.”  
  
  
  
  
    “I read somewhere that raisins can go in stew,” Steve offered, trying to be helpful. Sam considered for a second.   
“Why not? Chuck ‘em in.”  
  
The beef(jerky), carrot, potato, and now raisin stew ... smelled surprisingly good. Sam had come through with a few ready-to-heat pouches of soup, and they’d decided to combine the things that seemed least troublesome into some kind of soup-stew-meal-thing.   
  
    “I bet I can find some wild onions!” Steve said suddenly. Sam looked up, frowning.   
  
    “It’s pitch black and storming out. Onions aren’t worth all that--”  
  
    “I can see fine. I’ll be right back, okay?”  
  
    “You don’t know how to pack for a camping trip, but you can spot onions at night during a storm?”  
  
    “Yup. Not the first time I’ve done it.”  
  
Sam shook his head and went back to stirring the stew.   
  
  
  
  
  
Picking onions shouldn’t take two hours. Sam was damn sure of that. He chewed fretfully at his lip, glancing at his phone again. He’d called and texted Steve several times; the storm wasn’t letting up, and Sam was slowly becoming more and more worried. Rogers could take care of himself, but he was also a magnet for trouble.   
  
Sam heaved a huge sigh and squared his shoulders, coming to a decision. Turning off the heat of their little camping stove, Sam put on his jacket and shrugged into the heavy pack. Would he ever get a break from saving Rogers’ dumb ass?  
  
Sam was immediately soaked to the bone upon exiting the tent, the cold water trickling down the back of his neck. Camping was the _worst_.   
  
Sam used his hand to shield his eyes from the rain, squinting to see if he could pick out where Steve had wandered off. Using the flashlight in his pack, he swept the ground in front of him, looking for a familiar boot print-- and behind him, he heard the sound of tearing fabric. Whirling on the spot, Sam aimed the beam of the flashlight at the tent, and nearly had a heart attack when the cold flash of an animal’s eyes caught the light. Bears.   
  
Seriously. Bears. Sam was a brave man, but knowing that if he’d stayed another 5 minutes in the tent, he’d be a _dead_  brave man made him feel a little faint. One of the massive animals gave an inquisitive huff and moved towards him, and Sam bolted the other way. Usain Bolt _who_?  
  


* * *

  
    “Sam? You okay?”  
  
    “It’s raining, you went missing and nearly gave me a heart attack, our tent got attacked by bears, and I just fell off a cliff.”  
  
    “Yeah, that hill up there’s a doozy. Wait, bears?”  
  
    “A _doozy_. I accepted my death on the way down, Steve. This is how I was gonna die. Running from bears, in the rain, falling off a cliff.”  
  
    “The fall wasn’t that long.”  
  
    “Let me be dramatic. Please. It’s been a shitty night.”  
  
    “I-- you’re right. I’m sorry, Sam.”  
  
    “Thank you. Also, fuck you for dragging me camping.”  
  
    “Noted. I’ve got some good news, though!”  
  
    “What could possibly be good news at this point?”  
  
    “I see lights over that way,” Steve said, pointing. Sam noticed even in the dim beam of the flashlight (which had somehow survived the fall) that he was covered head to toe in scratches. Steve never got the hang of falling with grace, which was something Sam had had to learn fast during the trial runs of the Falcon wings.   
  
    “If that’s not a decent hotel, I’m going to murder you,” Sam said matter-of-factly, offering his hand to Steve to pull him up.   
  
    “Fair,” Steve nodded, leading the way towards the lights.   
  


* * *

  
The front desk attendant looked terrified as the sopping, bloodied and limping men stumbled into the elegant lobby of the hotel. Steve’s patented Captain America Smile, Sam’s charming witty banter, and a Stark black credit card got them a pretty nice room. 

  
  
  
  
  
    “Ooowww!”  
  
    “Holy shit, Steve, you’ve been thrown off of buildings. You’ve been thrown _through_  buildings. You’ve been shot more times than I can count. Quit whining, they’re just scratches.”  
  
    “I gotta act stoic in front of the troops. I mean, the team. The serum made me stronger, not immune to pain. And there are a _lot_  of damn scratches and you’re pouring _vodka_  all over them.”  
  
    “Gotta disinfect them,” Sam said cheerfully. He’d already tended to his own surprisingly few cuts (see? learning to fall properly paid off), but since his field kit had been lost in the bear attack (seriously. bears.) he had to make do with the overpriced tiny bottles of vodka in the minibar and the boxes of band-aids that the woman at the front desk had worriedly pressed into his hands upon them checking in.   
  
    “I’ll heal up in a few hours, Sam, geeze.”  
  
    “Sorry, did the serum make you immune to infection? Because I seem to remember someone getting a pretty nasty infection from a splinter because _oh, the serum_.”  
  
    “Point.”  
  
    “Damn right,” Sam muttered. He dabbed at the last (and worst) of Steve’s scrapes, gentle with his hands even as he grumbled about how foolish his boyfriend was.   
  
    “Sam,” Steve said quietly sometime later, halfway through tucking into a hamburger mercifully provided by room service despite the late hour.   
  
    “Hmm?”  
  
    “I uhm, when I fell off the cliff...”  
  
    “Yeah?”  
  
    “I just. I thought of you. I was worried about you and-- and I thought, ‘What if I never see him again?’ It made me feel sick.”  
  
Sam looked at him for a long moment before putting aside his mostly empty plate and scooting closer to him. He took Steve’s hand in his, threading their fingers together.   
“Yeah, Steve. Welcome to being in love.” They passed the tiny vodka bottles back and forth as they told each other about their camping mishaps while apart. It turned out to be a lot funnier on the retelling than when it had actually happened. That, and vodka made everything hilarious.   
  


* * *

  
    “You still cold?” Steve asked into the darkness. Sam mumbled sleepily and Steve took that to mean ‘yes,’ because he was soon shuffling closer behind Sam, holding him and letting his body heat warm Sam.  
  
    “I hate you slightly less,” Sam sighed, finally content.  
  
    “Music to my ears,” Steve yawned.  
  
They would both wake up with the warm afterglow of love. And pretty nasty hangovers.  
  



End file.
